Lab technicians: Increase your prospects

TOBY SIMMONDS took an unconventional route to becoming a scientist. A struggling farmer with no farm, he returned home from one short-term contract too many and took a job in the canteen at Cancer Research UK's laboratories. After a conversation with a researcher at the charity, he found himself looking after fish in a new facility. He began studying applied biology. Despite having little experience of laboratory work he was taken on by another researcher, purifying proteins for research as part of a team that supports some of the charity's projects. Today, he is proud of his work. "Eminent scientists come and ask me for advice," he says.

The story is not what you might expect from your typical technician, but then people become technicians for so many reasons it is hard to say what a typical technician is. Is it the school-leaver looking for something more stimulating than an office job, the graduate who wants hands-on work in the lab, or the postdoc with a family in search of job security? The answer is all of them, which raises the question: what do employers want from their technicians when job applicants have such diverse skills and education? What qualifications does a technician need, what character traits does it take to succeed, and what roles can technicians expect to perform?

Simmonds made it without a degree, although that's unusual for a technician who carries out experimental work. "Everybody's a graduate these days," he says. Louise Hewitt, a chief technician at the University of Manchester, says the level of qualification expected from new research technicians has increased. "Ten years ago technical positions went to people with an HNC - an academic and practical qualification," she says. "Now there are more degrees, first-class degrees. We sometimes have postdocs applying." She puts this down to the competitiveness of finding a postdoc position, which encourages people to look elsewhere for a good job.

As the academic credentials of technicians have increased, so has the amount of research they do. "You have your own project as a focus and interest," Hewitt says. That also means more chances to be an author on papers. Meanwhile, other parts of the role have fallen by the wayside. "If a piece of kit breaks down, you send it away to be repaired now. Twenty years ago I would have done it myself."

Degrees are not expected for all technician roles however, and are less common among technicians who do not carry out research but focus instead on lab management. Barry Davies is the UK lab services manager at AstraZeneca and employs technicians to "help the laboratory tick". They do everything from ordering materials to managing waste, looking after machines and overseeing safety. "They are very bright individuals who really manage the labs day-to-day and enable the scientists to focus on research," he says.

The technicians tend to have A-levels or HNCs, and Davies says they can be split into two broad camps. There are those who would never have imagined themselves working in the R&D labs of a company like AstraZeneca, he says; then there are those who take jobs as a stepping stone to work their way up to R&D positions.

Larry Gifford knows how hard it can be to work your way up. Now a professor and head of the school of pharmacy and pharmaceutical sciences at the University of Manchester, he left school at the age of 16 and took a job as a technician in the labs at ICI while studying chemistry at night school. A degree in chemistry and a PhD followed and Gifford's career took off, but he has not forgotten the long hours spent working all day and studying in the evenings. He says little has changed for the technicians he works with who do not have degrees. "It's no easier to progress now than when I started," he says. "We encourage all our technicians to try to gain further qualifications, but it's much harder to get to a significant position if you start as a technician."

Even if you have a degree, it can be hard to make the move into research if you are working as a technician. "Once you're out of academia, it's hard to get back in," Hewitt says. "It can be done if you're in the right lab with the right backing." Equality between labs is an issue now, she adds. Some university groups are much more supportive of their technicians than others when they want training and new qualifications. "It's a grey area."

However, for some there is little incentive to switch jobs, given how good a research technician's salary, pension scheme and job security can be. For those who enjoy working in a lab, being a research technician can be preferable to being an academic. Sue Patterson, at Newcastle University, studied for a PhD but for personal reasons did not submit her thesis, and became a research technician instead. She has never looked back. "I've always been interested in the hands-on side," she says. "Academics do a lot of teaching, meetings and paperwork." She avoids most of this, but finds she is at least as involved in the experimental side of research as the academics. "Researchers tend to initiate projects but you might adapt the methodology. Their academic background knowledge is better, but technicians know what happens in the lab."

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